Just Rules

by Anna Casanovas

“What’s that?” he asked, clearing his throat, standing back while he tried to make sense of it all.

  Susana turned around and looked him in the eye for a second. To Mac seemed like an eternity, and then without even trying to hide it, she looked him up and down. Her eyes moved to his torso, then to his waist, where she stopped and stared for a second, and then moved down his legs. When she finished, she looked him in the eye again. Mac could barely breathe.

  No, Susana wasn’t drunk. Those weren’t the eyes of a woman who didn’t know what she was doing, but they weren’t really the eyes of the sensible and reserved Susana Lobato either. They were the eyes of just Susana.

  “What is it that Tim doesn’t know?” repeated Mac, after running his tongue along his lower lip, which caught Susana’s attention.

  “That my favorite truffles are chocolate and mint. Actually, I think my ex-fiance doesn’t even know that I suffer from a slight chocolate addiction.”

  “Slight? But you always order chocolate desserts. I’m sure Tim knows,” he added, realizing that his words meant that he paid attention to her. He couldn’t hide it anymore. Wouldn’t.

  “Yes, Tim knows that I like chocolate, but he doesn’t know that those truffles from that specific shop are my favorites.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t know.”

  Susana looked down at the finger where she used to wear her engagement ring. Mac had no idea what had happened to that ring. She probably gave it back to Tim the day he left her, or maybe she had it stored away at her house. Or perhaps she flushed it down the toilet. He really didn’t care. The only thing he knew at that very moment was that Susana wasn’t wearing it anymore, and that he didn’t want her to think about the ring or the man who had given it to her.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not important,” said Mac, with a hoarse voice, referring to the chocolates.

  “Yes it is,” insisted Susan, finally lifting her head. “How did you know? Did you just happen to buy them there?” She moved closer to him, and she didn’t stop until she was right in front of his torso.

  Say that it was just a coincidence —thought Mac— she better step back or she’s going to realize what’s going on underneath your pajamas.

  “You said that they were your favorites at Quin’s wedding,” he confessed, disregarding his own advice, and he felt his heart beat faster and faster.

  “That was more than eight months ago,” said Susan, recalling the time Mac was referring to. “And you weren’t even part of that conversation.”

  “I must have overhead it. Why does it matter so much?” He folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Yes. Pamela and two bottles of tequila paid me a visit tonight, but I’m not drunk if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Of course he was worried about that. He wasn’t going to have that conversation with her, or any other, in that state of mind.

  “You should leave, Susana.” Mac went to open the door. “I’m sure tomorrow you will regret having come here, and I don’t want the sports commentators at your channel to tear me to shreds on their programs,” he said, trying to regain some normalcy between the two of them.

  “At Quin’s wedding you were wearing a black suit with a gray tie, and you had a bruise on your left cheek from the last game,” she said quickly without taking a breath and without giving herself time to think about the risk she was taking by being so honest with him. “During the dinner you told Mike that you couldn’t see well and that you’d probably have to wear glasses. Your favorite wine is syrah, and you hate oysters, but you pretend that you like them. Your favorite dessert is pineapple. And although you’re left-handed, you use silverware as if you were right-handed. And you have tic. Whenever you are nervous, you scratch the back of your right ear.”

  Mac stopped the hand that was doing just that.

  “How do you know all that?” he asked, looking her in the eye, his heart beating out of his chest.

  “I don’t know,” she confessed, her eyes sparkling. “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t stand me,” Mac reminded her.

  “You can’t stand me either, and you still know what my favorite chocolates are, and you bought me a box. Why did you visit me at work?”

  “I already told you,” he muttered. He had to get her out of there as soon as possible.

  “Ah, that’s right, because Tim asked you to. You could have told him no. He’s in Paris and can’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

  Susan did not believe him. The explanation he had given her would have made sense if they had a cordial relationship. But they did not.

  For more than a year they had been at each other’s throats whenever they had the chance.

  But that night, in that living room, neither of them could remember why.

  Susana took another step and touched Mac. He stepped back until he hit his back against the door.

  “What are you doing, Susana?”

  “I am trying to figure something out.” She lifted her hand and touched his wound that had become infected weeks earlier. Mac closed his eyes and breathed through his teeth. He had the palms of his hands on the wall and Susan was fascinated by the strength of his body. “You always smell like mint.”

  “Alright already, Susana.” In a last-ditch effort, he took his hands off the wall and held her by her shoulders. “What kind of game are you playing? What the hell are you trying to prove with all of this?”

  “Shut up and kiss me, Kev.”

  “Kev?” His own name sounded so strange to him.

  “Yes, Kev. Kiss me.” The hand that she still had close to his face moved, and he brushed a lock of hair off of her forehead. “Kiss me, and maybe that way I will stop thinking about you.”

  Mac could barely breathe, his heart stopped for a second, and then beat frantically. His hands burned as he felt Susana’s skin. Her smell was driving him crazy and he was just about to get lost in her gaze. He shook his head, but she got on her tippy toes and kissed him on the neck.

  God.

  Mac lost it.

  With a move that seemed like it was directly taken from a football game, he turned her around and they swapped positions. She was now against the door and he lifted her arms above her head.

  He held both her wrists with one hand and stopped his other one near Susan’s neck. He pressed his body against hers and neither his t-shirt nor her dressed served as a barrier between them. He could smell the tequila on her breath with the chocolate mints. His mouth was watering and he stopped asking himself where did this unstoppable urge to kiss her come from.

  Tomorrow she would hate him, despite the fact she had been the one who asked him to kiss her, actually, she had ordered him to kiss her.

  Yes, she was going to hate him, but Mac couldn’t stand to spend one more second not knowing what Susana’s kisses tasted like.

  He kissed her.

  As soon as Mac’s lips touched hers, Susana felt her heart stop for a second, and when it started up again, it beat differently than before. It was not what she expected to happen. He wasn’t going to kiss her, and if he did, she would not kiss him back. Kev’s kisses were going to leave her cold or bore her with indifference. However, she felt anything but indifference since seeing him in his pajamas.

  His tongue demanded to be inside her and she felt him scrape her lip with his teeth. No. She definitely wasn’t feeling indifference. To say that he made her weak in the knees was an understatement. Mac’s kiss melted her entire body and the only thing she could do was kiss him back.

  She had never kissed anyone like that before. She became angry. At thirty years old, why had she never felt like that before? And why had to be Kev MacMurray the one who made her feel that way?

  He moved the hand he had on the wall and caressed Susana’s face, separating her lips to kiss her like he needed to. He wasn’t going to stop now, he couldn’t. He had to kiss her again and again. He ran his tongue up and down the inside of her mouth without
stopping, and Susana tried to get her hands loose. Mac erroneously thought that she was trying to move away from him and held down her wrists. Susana, although she was reluctant to, moved her lips away from his.

  “I want to touch you,” she said with such a raspy voice that even she was surprised. “Kev, I want to touch you,” she repeated, looking him in the eye.

  There was something wild and primitive in his eyes, and he devoured her again with his mouth, without answering her or letting her loose from his grip. She could feel Kev breathing through his nose, while at the same time his tongue managed to make her blood boil, it now run slowly and sensually through her veins. Susana’s clothes were bothering her. Her dress was in the way, and his clothes bothered her even more. She had told him that she wanted to touch him, but the truth was that she needed to do much more than that. Now that she had had a little taste of him, she needed to taste the rest. She needed to taste Kev. And she needed him before it was too late.

  It will only happen once.

  The thought of it made her sick to her stomach and she kissed him so she didn’t have to think about it anymore.

  She wanted to know what his skin felt like and what exact color his freckles were, where they were, and how many he had. She wanted to kiss his entire body and discover how he tasted. She needed to. But he didn’t seem like he had the intention of loosening his grip on her, so she did something she had never done before (another first) and she bit his bottom lip.

  Mac didn’t know how had he been capable of being in the same room with her on so many occasions without jumping all over her. How the hell could he have been so blind? His mouth fit perfectly with hers. He could have spent hours discovering what she tasted like. The delicate moans that Susana tried so hard to hold back were the most erotic and sensual sounds he had ever heard, and the way she moved her hips could make him commit any sin. And when she bit his bottom lip, a shiver ran up and down his spine, and he opened his eyes so that he could look at her. He thought to himself that if she asked him to stop, he would, that if she looked repulsed he would accept it. But what he saw was a kind of passion and desire that he had never seen in any woman before. And he used to call her frigid? For a heartbeat his mind unkindly reminded him that Susana had been Tim’s fiance and ugly feeling run through his blood. She must have sensed something because she let go of his lip that she still had between her teeth and kissed him again.

  It was the first kiss that she had initiated, and when Mac felt her tongue exploring the inside of his mouth as if it belonged to her he forgot about everything else and let out a moan that came from the depths of his soul.

  Susana needed to touch him. She needed to keep discovering what was happening to her, and she needed to do it at that very moment, before she convinced herself that she was making a mistake. She tried to escape from his grip again, but he grabbed her arms and pinned her to the door once more.

  “Kev, please.”

  He let go off her then, and Susana took the chance to slip her hands underneath Kev’s shirt before he could change his mind. She could feel him trembling as she ran her fingernails over his abs to see what other reactions she could get out of him.

  Mac held on to her waist for a few seconds and then moved one hand up to her breasts. He touched them through her dress and she arched her back looking for a much more intimate caress. Susana couldn’t contain what she was feeling, and she didn’t want to either. Her entire body burned. It was as if Kev was inside her and yet it wasn’t enough. Now his taste on her lips and she felt his skin on hers. The smell of mint enveloped her, but she acutely wanted more. Perhaps part of her brain was in denial about what that actually meant, but her hands were determined, and they went down Mac’s pajama bottoms. Susana’s hands didn’t stop until they grabbed Kev’s buttocks and pulled him closer to her.

  Mac was going to climax right then and there and make a fool of himself in front of Susana. He had to stop kissing her, and when he was finally able to, he looked her in the eye. She looked back at him, licked her bottom lip and ran her hands up and down his pants. Mac licked his lip again, this time in an effort to say something. He wanted to ask her if she was sure of what she was doing, but Susana kept him silent with another kiss. Mac kissed her right back and he gave in to the burning desire that was growing between them

  Susana was wearing a green, wool dress, and Mac began to take it off with the hand that until then had been on her waist. He slipped the hand underneath the dress and began to trace the outline of her underwear.

  What little control they both had had up until that point completely vanished when Mac’s hand went south. Susana pulled his pants down until just below his buttocks, Kev tore her underwear off in a single movement and lifted her up in his arms. Susana wrapped her arms around his neck and Kev slipped inside her, pushing her against the door, which luckily for them, was solid wood.

  “Susana,” he moaned quietly, feeling the heat from being inside her envelop him.

  “Kev.” She couldn’t stop saying his name.

  Mac started to move his body, but not in the way a typical lady’s man would. Instead, the way his body moved was more like that of a hopeless man who’s realized that he’s finally found his woman.

  “Jesus Christ, Susana.”

  Mac’s head and back were soaked in sweat, and his sex which was already completely erect, kept getting harder with each of Susana’s answers. She moaned, dug her fingernails in the back of his neck, and kissed him like she needed him to breath.

  “Kev…more. Please,” she sighed, biting her bottom lip as she separated from him for a second, and Mac saw her blush when she realized she had said it out loud.

  “No, don’t try to control it. It’s OK —he said— I like hearing you.”

  Susana smiled at him and continued to kiss him with an innocence that didn’t match the woman who just dug her fingernails into his back. And the contrast made Kev tremble.

  “More,” she whispered.

  “Yes, more please,” he muttered, pulling out almost enough so that he was barely inside her anymore, just so he could put it back in again. “More.”

  Mac didn’t know what exactly was happening with her, besides the fact that it was the best sex he’d ever had in his life, but he knew it was way much more than that. And he was terrified that she wouldn’t feel the same as he. He had the horrible feeling that that would be the only chance he would have to get to her, and he was willing to do whatever it took to make her addicted to him. Because the thought of not being with Susana again was simply unbearable. He began caressing her breasts with the hand that was resting on them. He slowed down the movement of his hips until he found a rhythm that drove both of them wild, taking them to the limit without letting them reach what they needed so desperately. His shirt was completely soaked and she was trembling. Susana wrapped her legs around Kev’s waist and her arms around his neck, making herself a prisoner between him and the entrance door.

  “Kev,” she moaned, interrupting another one of those long kisses, and with her eyes closed she rested her head on the wall.

  To hear her say his name was extremely erotic. He had been called Mac or Hurricane for so many years that he had almost forgotten his real name. But Susana had not.

  “Kev —she repeated, caressing the hair on the back of his neck— please…”

  Kev was so turned on he could barely stand it. He had never been so close to having an orgasm, without actually having one. He had never been so impatient to reach it at the exact same time as the woman he was with.

  She said she wanted more. He wasn’t sure if he could give her more but he was willing to try. He removed the hand that had been resting on her buttocks, and pushed all of Susana’s weight completely onto the door. The slight change in position made him penetrate her to the most intimate place inside her and at that precise moment, he felt her first spasms. And he succumbed to his own orgasm. Kev had never ejaculated with such strength and the moan of pleasure that came from his throa
t threatened to leave him voiceless, so to contain it, he buried his face in Susan’s neck and bit her.

  When Susan felt the bite she moaned as well, and as the first orgasm started to fade out it turned into a second one. With his legs planted firmly on the floor, Mac held her up with his body the whole time, despite the fact that his own was shaking.

  They stayed in that position until he could regain his breath, and then he carefully put her on the floor. She still had her head turned to one side, but Kev thought that she was just tired. It would have made sense, because after all, he was destroyed, and after pulling on his pants he went to give her a kiss. He wanted to kiss her, loose himself in her lips. After having been inside her like that, it was what he really needed, and he wanted to pick her up and put her in his bed. They would sleep for a while and when they woke up…

  Susana looked at him and Kev felt sick to his stomach. The eyes that were looking back at him were not those of the woman who had demanded him to shut up and kiss her, rather, they were the eyes of Steel Pants full of regret. No! He shouted silently. He couldn’t allow Susana to regret what had just happened between them.

  “Susana…” It hurt him to say her name because he knew that she would try to leave when she heard it.

  “Don’t say anything.” She put a hand in the air to stop him and with the other hand she reached behind her for the doorknob. “Don’t say anything. Goodbye, Mac.”

  She fumbled with the door, opened it, and got out of there before Mac could do anything but stare at her with his heart breaking in his eyes..

  Chapter 10

  Tenth rule of American football:

  The objective of the defense consists of stopping the other team from advancing toward the end zone by tackling the offensive player who has the ball or by forcing turnovers.

  Susana left Mac’s house and got in the taxi that had brought her there. Besides the crazy thing she had just done, at least she had been smart enough to ask the taxi driver to wait for her. When she left her apartment with the empty box of chocolates, her intention was to go see MacMurray, not Kev, to tell him that he did not need to pretend like he was worried about her, and that she never wanted to see him again. On the way there, she also told herself that with this night visit she would prove to Pam, and to herself, that it was absolutely ridiculous to think that she and Mac were attracted to one another..